Sarah Connolly/Malcolm Martineau, Wigmore Hall - music review

Consummate artistry from Connolly, ably accompanied by Malcolm Martineau, in a programme of undeniable rarity value
The International 2013 Opera Awards. L-R Joyce DiDonato and Sarah Connolly. PICTURE BY: NIGEL HOWARD Email: nigelhowardmedia@gmail.com
NIGEL HOWARD
12 May 2013

It takes a brave singer to present a programme in which not a single song is a popular favourite. But Sarah Connolly is such a revered artist that she can draw a near-capacity audience at Wigmore Hall for an exploration of the byways of the French repertoire. Whether many in the audience would choose to revisit those particular chemins, given the opportunity, is a moot point.

The texts of the opening Roussel group spoke of balmy nights, trembling grass and whispering gardens. There was a hint of sensuality in Nuit d’Automne (so warm was the autumn night that “you could fall asleep naked”) but Roussel’s music is restrained to a fault.

In Fauré’s late song cycle Le Jardin Clos (The Walled Garden), passion is also kept well below the surface. The melodic lines and harmonies are as fragile as the imagery (a bird on the sea, a sleeping fairy).

The rich, sensuous piano sonorities of Dans la Nymphée (In the Grotto) evoke the presence of a lover but it turns out to be a dream. There are brief flashes of passion but the ardour of the younger Fauré has given way to renunciation.

All this makes for something of a challenge for the performer. Connolly knows how to make the most of subtle nuances and half-lights but it was difficult to feel that these songs exploited her full expressive potential.

The first half ended with Chausson’s Chanson Perpetuelle, in which the only outburst of passion is generated by the absence of the lover. No wonder those impressionable young Frenchmen such as Chausson and Chabrier fell under the spell of Wagner, sobbing uncontrollably and fainting at performances of Tristan und Isolde.

But we heard nothing of them in unbuttoned mode. Instead, after the interval, we had five pithy songs by Honegger, Petit Cours de Morale of 1941. Then came three Lorca settings by Poulenc, dismissed even by the composer as “of little importance”. André Caplet’s La Croix Douloureuse (The Cross of Pain) inhabits a similar world to Debussy’s The Martyrdom of St Sebastian, where mortification and pain are the spurs to passion.

Satie’s Three Love Poems to his own texts are knowing and characteristically dispassionate but even Connolly was hard put to it to stimulate any appreciative response. A final group by Turina, written after his return from Paris to Spain, raised the emotional temperature by a degree or two.

Consummate artistry from Connolly, ably accompanied by Malcolm Martineau, and a programme of undeniable rarity value. But I rather think that if you’re going to be taken on an unfamiliar journey, there need to be some highlights on the way.

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